Open Discussions

I am offering a set of no-cost discussions about Agile and DevOps that I call Open Discussions. The details of these discussions are summarized below. I have also included links to the PowerPoint presentations we will use to facilitate the discussions.

Open Agile Discussion

This is a one-hour open discussion on Agile Software Delivery. We will discuss the major topics of Agile Software Delivery using a PowerPoint presentation as a guide. The goal is to discuss your current Agile state and identify areas where you may be able to improve. The following points will be covered: (Download PPT)

Why – this covers why we should even bother with using Agile.

Fundamentals – this discusses the basic building blocks of an Agile approach.

Scrum Overview – here, we will discuss the basics of Scrum.

Kanban Overview – here, we discuss the basics of Kanban.

Estimation – in order to predict dates, we need a lightweight way to estimate features.

Budget and Schedule – here, we discuss the basics of a budget and a delivery schedule.

Progress and Scope Creep – we need to understand our progress and understand the effects new and changed features will have on budget and schedule.

Open DevOps Discussion

DevOps is becoming an extension of Agile. This is a one-hour open discussion on DevOps. We will discuss the major topics of DevOps using a PowerPoint presentation as a guide. The goal is to discuss your current DevOps state and identify areas you may be able to improve. The following points will be covered: (Download PPT)

Why DevOps – this is overhead in DevOps and automation. This covers why we should consider taking on this additional work.

Basics – this covers the basics of DevOps and some history.

Environments (production, build, quality assurance) – this covers the environments we need and how Infrastructure as code can define our environments in JSON files. This allows us to easily create and delete infrastructure in the cloud and only pay for what we use.

Agile Process – this covers how DevOps fits into the Agile process.

Version Control and Branches – here, we discuss branching and version control options and how code reviews may be part of the process.

Software Development, Front End and Database – we will discuss techniques we can use to allow us to roll back releases.